Day 5
Less than four weeks until the Best Show on Television returns. 24 begins its fifth season in January on back-to-back nights of two-hour episodes...four hours over two consecutive nights...before settling into its regular Monday timeslot. Tonight I watched a 10-minute prologue to Season 5 that was funded by Toyota expressly for the DVD release of Season 4. It doesn't appear to be directly related to upcoming events and exists really to sell Toyotas (they reportedly paid $1,000,000 for the "mini-episode").

In it, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), who had faked his own death and was last seen wandering into the sunset David Banner-style, is in Chicago, where he drives up an empty street in a sleek Toyota 4-door, parks, gets out, and hides behind a big truck. There he meets Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub), who tells him that her computer at CTU has been invaded and his autopsy records examined and that he'd better get the hell outta Chicago. Before she leaves (in another Toyota), Jack asks her how his daughter Kim is doing. It has been 12 months since Jack's "death", and Chloe tells him that she was heartbroken, but has gotten better.

Chloe splits and Jack gets into his car, where he spies a mysterious motorcycle rider whose features are hidden by his helmet. Then--SCREEEEEECHHHH!--a car whips around the corner...and we've got a car chase! It wouldn't pass muster on a typical T.J. HOOKER episode, but I guess it's as good as we get from today's TV directors (there are no cast or crew credits on this "episode", so I don't know who directed this one).

Jack eventually maneuvers his way into an auto junkyard, where his pursuer slides sideways into a forklift and fatally crashes. As Jack surreptitiously drives off, the mysterious motorcyclist watches...

Today was our annual White Elephant game at work. If you saw the hilarious Christmas episode of THE OFFICE, where they called it Yankee Swap, you know how it works: everyone opens a gift, which could be something nice or something lame. Then there's a stealing round, where you can either keep what you have or swipe someone else's gift and trade them yours.

I am the King of White Elephant. For five straight years, I have left with something pretty good and definitely better than what I brought in. I usually use it as an excuse to dump some old VHS tapes I don't need anymore, so someone this year took home a collection of Don "The Dragon" Wilson, David Carradine, Treat Williams and Jeff Wincott movies. I ended up with A CHRISTMAS STORY on DVD. Some of the "zonks" this year included an ugly hummingbird candle that has been re-gifted three years in a row, a Wal-Mart gift card with no money left on it, a framed photo of one of my co-workers, a Xmas tree ornament of a cappuccino machine and an oven mitt that came in a custom-made iPod box complete with a photo of Steve Carell (those of us OFFICE fans thought this was a hilarious gift).